Jenny DeMonte and Robert Hanna at the Center for American Progress have written a timely paper on recent efforts to distribute the best teachers more evenly to those students who need it the most. This research has become possible due to new teacher evaluation processes that make it easier to compare the effectiveness of teachers across schools and districts. Without these metrics, it would be impossible to say whether or not poorer students did in fact have a less equitable representation of top-tier teachers.
Most agree that the best teachers should be teaching the students who need them most, but this new review of data from the newest teacher evaluation systems shows that that is not always what happens. Following are the three main points from the paper:
- The new evaluation data confirm previous findings—in many places, poor children and children of color are less likely to be taught by a highly effective teacher.
- Despite the overall pattern of inequitable distribution, there are some places where excellent teachers are more evenly deployed.
- The places with a more balanced distribution of effective teachers are where we should look to learn about the policies and practices that help give all students access to great teaching.
The paper concludes by highlighting the excellent work of Ascension Parish Schools in Louisiana, in which there are about 21,000 students, with almost half of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and 40 percent students of color. According to DeMonte and Hanna, this district has found success in equitably distributing teachers by employing TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement, which includes as part of its design an emphasis on teacher evaluation, feedback, and collaboration around improvement.
More broadly, the paper concludes with a list of steps for other districts to find success:
- Identify high-quality teachers by improving data about teaching effectiveness.
- Use data on the effectiveness of teachers to determine the distribution of these teachers across schools and classrooms.
- Retain effective teachers by reforming career and compensation systems.
- Increase the reach of highly effective teachers by creating roles for master and mentor teachers to support and coach their colleagues.
- Encourage effective teachers to move to disadvantaged schools through incentives such as differentiated compensation.
- Improve the effectiveness of all teachers through proven professional development.
- Improve recruitment of new teachers, with the goal of hiring an effective teacher workforce.
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